Good Luck Graduates

Penn State is once again unleashing graduates into the work stream, so hide your daughters! Ah, I remember my graduation like it was 12 years ago …. Wait, it was 12 years ago. In all honesty, it was a culmination of 4 years of hard work and hard partying, and it was an end of an era that I look very fondly upon to this very day. Isn’t it funny that one spends four years (or many more) in college, looking forward to the day of graduation, but once that graduation day comes and goes, one begins to start looking back?

I remember the final two weeks very well, leading up to my big day. I was actually lucky enough not to have any finals – Three of my classes had papers due (two of them had them due before finals week, but I was diligent enough to hand the other class’s paper in on the last week of classes as well), and the other two didn’t bother to even have a final. It was glorious. It was like a giant two-week vacation, complete with much drinking and partying (probably time that should’ve been spent looking for employment, but nevertheless).

I guess it never really hit me – that I had finally completed my tour of duty at the Shangri-la known as Happy Valley, and that I was mere days away from being thrust into the real world. Or maybe it was my way of preparing myself by pickling my brain. I’m not really sure. I do know that the last night, I became very emotional.

Spending time with all of my roommates and close friends at the Rathskellar, probably for the last time (at least with all of these friends), it hit me. I immediately started longing for more time, and if I couldn’t have that, I wanted to go back in time, so I could tell my younger self to not be so impatient and to enjoy the moments. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy them, but I think I could’ve enjoyed them more. It was tearful for me that night, because I was putting an era that I loved so dearly behind me.

The experience at Penn State was so powerful, that every year around this time my mind drifts back to Happy Valley. Certain songs that were popular back then will taxi me back. Songs like Backwater by the Meatpuppets, and anything from Pearl Jam 10, and even some Nirvana – at the time, I wasn’t crazy about those songs, but now I can’t get enough, because it gives me a Penn State high.

Good Luck Graduates.